jthamind

Dakan, on 05 June 2013 - 12:12 PM, said:

The simple reason is, that the higher you get the more important the trashpulls are. Fractals on high difficulty are pretty much only about thrash & trash events where Black Powder is just the best skill a thief has (you can substitute with S/D & blind on stealth but it's not as good as S/P). Let me paraphrase (only to get slaughtered by Tolkien Fans):
"A hundred Blades to rule them all, Black Powder to blind them, Into the Void to bring them all and a Ring of Warding to bind them."
For 2 Warrior, Guardian, Mesmer, Thief at least .

That's not to say the bosses can't kill you, they can... but the trash takes time, and even the (probably) hardest boss in fractals, the ascendend grawl shaman is all about trash.

Rachmani, on 05 June 2013 - 01:24 PM, said:

Just dropped by to say that this is, perhaps, the most epic thing ever written on these forums.



As you were.

Dasryn, on 04 June 2013 - 05:24 AM, said:

It probably has nothing to do with you.  When you get to 30+ fractals your dps players are only as effective as your control players enable them to be.  If your reflects arent good, if your focus pulls suck, if your guardians dont use stability and ring of warding effectively (to name a few things) your dps players are going to be limited.  Without effective control, bursting down trash is much more difficult and encounters will be prolonged and the inevitable splash damage will occur.

So yeah, it probably isn't you as a Thief.

Arewn, on 08 June 2013 - 02:58 AM, said:

Because there will be less damage, but it will be harder to avoid.  Stuff like blind, protection, and aegis will actually make a difference then.

Right now defense is irrelevant because everything that can kill you can be avoided with good reflexes.  You only need enough defense to survive proportionate to how often you make mistakes.

First, this thread should probably be in the PvE thief section, as this is for PvP.

Second, in general, making a build reliant on healing is ineffective in PvE. In WvW, you might be alright as some kind of distraction or fodder, considering the survivability you'd have. But in PvE, that healing and toughness won't amount to jack, especially when your damage will be so low.

While you might be relatively survivable by building up toughness and healing, in combination with lots of stealth, the unfortunate reality is that focusing on those attributes actually makes you less survivable. Due to GW2 PvE's grotesquely imbalanced aggro system, in which armor has a disproportionately large impact, by building your toughness you make yourself an aggro magnet, despite doing less damage. You end up being less survivable because the toughness and healing you get isn't enough to off-set all the aggro.

Just as well, taking all cleric's gear means getting, at most, 300 precision (~14% crit chance, for a total of 18%) and 30% crit damage. You would end up dealing such low damage that fights would drag on longer, making your focus on healing nullified at best, crippling at worst.

Instead, focus on building a load of dodges and evades, which is the thief's forte imo. Admittedly, not building any toughness or vitality will leave you very squishy, so you might want to do a mix of knight's and berserker's/valkyrie's until you become more comfortable with dodging and staying mobile. Once you are comfortable with survivability via dodging, blinds, and c/c, then start making the switch to full berserker's gear. Every attribute spent on toughness or vitality is more potential damage that you're losing, for defense you don't necessarily need.

In particular, one combination I love is to get the trait that grants vigor when you use your heal skill, and use that in conjunction with Withdraw. On a 15s cooldown, it's a dodge and heal that gives 8s of vigor. That's a little more than 50% uptime of vigor without even bringing boon duration.


In short, unfortunately, no: a cleric's build isn't really viable in PvE for anything other than a guardian, or certain niche engi builds. And even then, there's better options imo. However, it might be viable in WvW if you take a lot of stealth with you; I'm sure you could really annoy the hell out of some invaders with stealth, dodges, and constant healing.

Simon1812, on 07 June 2013 - 04:25 PM, said:

If you can dodge, why is any of that healing necessary.  Just your rune choice alone compared to Ruby Orbs is costing you about 25% dps.  That's a huge amount of dps to trade off just so you can avoid learning boss mechanics.  I think you would find that if you forced yourself to learn the encounters you wouldn't need all that useless (to your team) defense and would begin to phase it out.

Simon1812, on 07 June 2013 - 04:25 PM, said:

Sounds more like a panda than a wolverine.  If you're a tank why are you the last one standing?  People don't seem to realize that if you are a tank, you are supposed to die FIRST.  If people other than you are dying it means you are not doing your job properly.  Bragging about being the last one standing is pretty much going "I'm such a crappy tank I get my party killed all the time".

if your only argument for pvp is about how your character look, I'm not taking you seriously

The only definitive conclusion is that Zommoros is a jerk.

It's been that way since the beginning.  Classes are not balanced for 1v1, and some builds will completely counter other builds, or even other professions.  It is this way because balancing for 1v1 is pretty much crap and would homogenize the classes so that they are all on even footing with all other classes.

Why would you expect PvP to not be group oriented when you have teams?

Probably the easiest way to force more variety is to move away from the massive damage, slow attack methodology that is currently in use.  If you increased the level of unavoidable damage while toning down some of the life threatening mega-attacks that get used, you'd see much more desire for support/control to be used.  As it stands today, as long as you can dodge the mega-attacks (or aegis or distortion etc.) you don't really need to worry about anything else because you either kill things too quickly, or they just don't do enough damage to matter.

Take the alpha fight in CoE for example.  If you get hit by the big attacks, you're probably going to die.  If you can actually dodge them, you'll barely take any damage at all.  You could keep the same feel of the fight, but just have the big attack hit for half of your life instead of all of it, and keep a steady stream of damage going out to everyone so there is a need for kiting, weakness, protection, regen etc.  It wouldn't really make the fight harder per se, but you'd either need to bring some tools to ensure your own survival, or you'll need to bring somebody who can provide those tools for the group.

How about less bosses and more terrifying groups of foes? If we can have all the control effects put to use in pvp, but are suffering from the defiant buff in pve. Wouldn't it be awesome if there were more parts in dungeons where your control effects are actually effective?

Imagine:

1) Your team enters a cave in which a good 12 mobs are awaiting you. The three veteran corrupted quaggans in the back are slow but powerful casters. Once they unleash their AoE (5 large rings or so per caster, too large to get out of the aoe with 1 dodge, maybe even 2 if you're in the heart) it'll deal a good 7000 damage per second that you're standing in it. If one of the spells has succesfully been cast, you're probably going to be able to dodge your way out without going down. But if all three unleash their wrath, you're going to get wiped.

Next to these veterans are three corrupted dredge guards. They spend their time putting up reflective shields and knocking people down. They do all this while shouting hold the line every now and then.

The remaining six are melee corrupted grawl.(No one is immune to corruption) They are some generally annoying mobs. Throwing up blinds and retaliation and whatnot. An immobilize every now and then and perhaps a chilling attack. The worst thing about these is that they keep returning from the dead after a short downtime.

The trick would be to interrupt the casters while slowly taking everything down. Slowly, because if you don't watch out, you get hit by reflected missiles or take too much retaliation damage (unless you strip the boon ofcourse). Going in melee brings you past the reflective shields, but also closer to the heart of the AoE, taking more damage. You could try to pull the guards from the casters with control effects, although they'll keep trying to walk back to the veteran they're trying to guard.
Perhaps stealthing in and spiking a veteran with a lot of conditions would work. But you'd have a hard time getting back out if you leave the other two casters able to unleash their aoe.

Someone crippling or otherwise slowing/stopping the melee would also be a good idea. Basically 3 players are busy trying to stay alive, interrupt the casters and keep the crowd busy, while the remaining two take down a guard or caster.

Ofcourse all zerker gear would still be an option, but man it'd be hard to pull off. Since there is so much damage going around, you cannot possible dodge all of it. And because the damage is countable (and not a 45k hit) healing and armor actually have an effect.

To make this encounter a bit more friendly to more casual players, there should be an npc with some tips.

2) Another example of an encounter that'd punish people for going all berserker is a wave of near immortal mobs trying to take you down as if in a nightmare. You'd just have to stay alive until you wake up. Only support and defense would do you any good here.

3) A pull & push encounter. You're trying to keep control over an arena which is hovering high up in the air. The evil consortium masterminds have found another way to entertain the crowds. You can kill the mobs as they come, but after a while there'd just be too many. However, you can also push them off the platform. Sending them to their death on the pins below.

4) A mobility check. There are 10 switches, each switch triggers a trap. There is some distance inbetween the switches which you can more easily cover by using teleports and such. The mobs are coming to you through a maze (the maze start below and goes up, from the top and end of the maze you can look down upon it). They're incredibly strong but not immune to control effects. If they manage to reach your party, you're going to be in a world of hurt. One might be manageable, but two will be lethal. However, you can walk on top of the maze and use control effects to try and keep them in place while your party members use their speed/mobility to reach the correct switch for the trap you need.

5) Part of the army. Your team is part of an army. The army is made up of mindless mobs with only an auto attack, but they have strength in numbers and are dealing quite a bit of damage. However, they're not immortal and get killed eventually if you are not joining in. The enemies come in large numbers but can be killed as usual. They come from everywhere and if you're not paying attention and let the guys on the flanks go down, before you know it, you're surrounded by endless swarms of risen chickens. Your support skills are super effective because they affect so many allies. And with a bit of healing/protection they will be much more likely to survive their encounter. Winning through damage is still an option, but not necessarily faster, since after a while your 15 dead npcs would probably outdamage your zerkergear.

Those are just a couple of ideas that'd make our support & control characters shine. Unfortunately, all the time won this way by having non-dps/zerker builds might be lost by having one megaboss at the end. But I've seen some solid suggestions for new boss mechanics in these threads aswell, so perhaps there are options .

I just want GW2 combat to be what Anet originally envisioned:
http://gw2101.gtm.gu.../healing-death/

I'd like to see a healthy amount of control and support (without requiring a single player to be designated to that role alone) be optimal instead of Pure DPS.
I just feel it would make the combat more interesting as well as encouraging more varied builds.

Trei, on 01 June 2013 - 03:53 AM, said:

If they add anything that would cause hard set role requirements for dungeon success, it would be returning to a trinity system.
How would survive till X work? obviously not by getting something's HP to a certain range, because that would be dps. Would it be an 'unlimited' number of spawning monster for a time interval? killing the monsters would be an incredibly functional way to survive that, once again dps. How about an invincible boss that you have to survive against for X amount of time?(or a periodic invincibility buff) well is that actually fun to do on a consistent basis? you're essentially going to be running around dodging the same way you usually would, but without having to dps at the same time. They could add targets you have to kill to reduce the bosses damage or something, but once again that's about dps. More importantly, would that require you to build different stats (vitality, toughness, healing, boon duration), and if so, would it be a general "across the board" change in build requirements, or would you just need to have a guardian in soldiers gear to fill the role?
Damage range requirements that necessitate crits/no crits are just gimmicky build wars.

Ultimately, the objective for the majority of encounters(and game as a whole) is killing through damage, as Reikou (post #9) pointed out: even in games with trinity, the objective is dps and other roles are only there to facilitate dps. If there's a raid boss in WoW that you can get away with only having one tank for, one of your tanks swaps to dps.
If you add a few "you need something else(stats) to beat it" encounters, people either won't do it because they don't want to have to respec just to kill a single boss, or will find a way to kill it with straight up damage.
No matter what you do or add, it's either going to be pushed through with damage, or cause a role requirement that turns the game into a trinity like system, where other roles facilitate dps. Arena Net didn't want that because it caused hang up like "bring the class(or NPC), not the player". So they instead have a system where every one does damage, but also supports and CCs to varying degrees (I don't mean to preach, I'm sure you know this, I'm just showing my train of thought).

The only way you are going to get people to build things other then dps (in the dungeon meta), is by either introducing a new required role that builds something else, or by not offering a damage stat as an option.
For example, WoW has stamina on ALL it's (end game) gear. Why? because if stamina (hp) was there as an option with a dps stat alternative, damage dealers would just take the dps. But for the sake of encounter design (tanks get gear and get tankier, so new bosses and encounters need to do more damage), even dps need extra stamina, so they forced it.
The "go damage or go home" zerker meta (leaving aside condition damage), is a result of:
a ) there being no trinity to require other roles/stat building
b ) damage being available in all stat slots
True statistical build variety out side of dps is only going to come by having one of your stats unable to be allocated to dps.
Encounter design needs improvement too, and will help aliviate this meta issue, but at its base is a different problem.


Other ideas:
-add a jumping puzzle segment to a boss fight *escape the dragon as it chases you through crumbling ruins* that would be cool, but jumping puzzles are a different segment of the game which some people hate and do dungeons to escape, so they could only add such things in a limited capacity. More importantly though, while this doesn't require dps, it also doesn't require other builds (nothing beyond swapping to a weapon that gives swiftness or utility that gives stability anyways). So it does nothing to solve the problem.
-reword defiance, making hard CC and interrupts necessary or highly beneficial on bosses (adding periodic abilities that require interrupting, something unblockable/dodgeable, this would be funner in general, but doesn't require build/stat changes alone). Add a stat or stat interaction(%of vitality for example) that makes CC more affective against defiance.
-rework boons, making group buffing (or enemy debuffing) weak/inaccessible unless you spec(traits) and gear for it.
Problem with the above two? that either means you're going to require a buff specced player and/or a CC specced player in order to complete dungeon content (role requirements), or you'll just re-optimize your zerker group and take what buffs you can get while sticking with dps.
Additional ideas are going to follow suit, they're either going to be on a teeter totter of 'causes role requirements/is ignorable through dps', or will be general fun improvements/superior dungeon design, but not require build/stat/meta change.

I'd love to see the PvE being developed towards encouraging the original GW2 combat-philosophy: Damage, Control & Support.

Everyone carries their own weigh so Support is barely needed. You almost never need Condition Removal, Healing, Boons etc.

Control is almost non-existent. No-one needs mobs to move slower, or to have a longer skill cooldown through Chilled, or Fumble through Weakness, or Blind, or barely any reduced healing through Poison. Most of all, there's no need for Interrupts through Daze, Knockback, Blowout, Daze, Stun, Push, Sink, Float or just pure Interrupt.

Imagine how much more interesting and deep the combat would be, how high the skillcap would become and how much the build-variety would increase since there's room for a lot more than just damage. The tools are there, it's just the Encounters that isn't designed right.